E069 · Learning, literacy & numeracy
Difficulty decoding unfamiliar written words
What might be happening when a young person struggles to work out unfamiliar written words, even when they may understand those words when they hear them?
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Overview
Reading an unfamiliar written word requires a young person to use what they know about the relationship between written symbols and spoken language.
In alphabetic writing systems such as English, this includes recognising letters or groups of letters, connecting them with sounds and blending those sounds to identify a word.
This process is often described as decoding.
A young person may have excellent spoken language, broad knowledge and strong understanding while finding this process unexpectedly difficult.
They may recognise familiar words that they have encountered many times but struggle when presented with a word they have not previously learned or memorised.
This distinction matters because recognising familiar words can sometimes conceal continuing difficulty with the underlying process of reading new ones.
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What this might look like
A young person might:
- struggle to sound out unfamiliar words
- guess a word from its first letter
- substitute a visually similar word
- rely heavily on pictures or surrounding context
- read familiar words much more successfully than unfamiliar ones
- find invented or nonsense words particularly difficult
- lose track while blending several sounds
- struggle with longer or multisyllabic words
- repeatedly encounter the same unfamiliar word without becoming secure
- avoid reading aloud
- read slowly because each word requires considerable effort
- understand a word immediately once somebody else says it aloud
- have stronger listening comprehension than independent reading would suggest.
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Developmental expression
At this stage
Early childhood
As formal reading begins, difficulty may appear through learning letter–sound correspondences, blending sounds or developing reliable strategies for unfamiliar words.
Early childhood
As formal reading begins, difficulty may appear through learning letter–sound correspondences, blending sounds or developing reliable strategies for unfamiliar words.
Middle childhood
Peers increasingly read familiar words automatically. Continuing decoding difficulty may therefore become more visible through slow reading, guessing or avoidance.
Early adolescence
Curriculum texts contain increasingly specialised and multisyllabic vocabulary. A young person may understand the subject when it is discussed but struggle to access the written material independently.
Later adolescence
Decoding difficulty can significantly increase the time and effort required for study, qualifications, employment and everyday written information.
Choose each stage to see how the presentation and surrounding expectations may change over time.
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Strengths and differences
Difficulty decoding words does not indicate weak:
- intelligence
- spoken vocabulary
- reasoning
- curiosity
- knowledge
- listening comprehension
- creativity.
A young person may understand complex material very successfully when it is read aloud.
This is why Phoenix should always distinguish:
difficulty accessing the written word from difficulty understanding the underlying idea.
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Top tips for support
- Identify whether decoding is actually the difficulty rather than assuming all weak reading is the same.
- Provide systematic teaching matched to the young person's current reading skills.
- Give sufficient practice without creating public embarrassment.
- Maintain access to age-appropriate knowledge and literature through reading aloud, audiobooks and other accessible formats.
- Do not restrict a young person's curriculum to the level of text they can independently decode.
- Reduce guessing strategies that bypass the written word.
- Pre-teach particularly demanding curriculum vocabulary where helpful.
- Allow additional time.
- Protect reading confidence.
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Things needing careful planning
England's current Reading Framework distinguishes word reading from language comprehension and recommends systematic synthetic phonics for pupils who have not secured decoding, including older pupils who remain unable to decode sufficiently well. It also emphasises maintaining pupils' access to appropriate language, knowledge and literature while foundational reading skills are being strengthened. (1)
Dyslexia is an important search and explanatory term, but E069 should not become a dyslexia entry.
Young people described as dyslexic may show different combinations of decoding, spelling, fluency and other difficulties, while decoding difficulty itself can occur in young people with many different developmental histories.
The language and writing system also matter. Expectations about decoding in English cannot simply be transferred unchanged to another orthography or to a young person learning to read through an additional language.
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Practical support principles
Useful support may include:
- systematic phonics teaching
- explicit grapheme–phoneme instruction
- blending practice
- carefully matched decodable text
- cumulative review
- explicit work with increasingly complex word structures
- additional practice for older pupils delivered in age-respectful ways
- accessible text/audio alongside decoding intervention
- frequent assessment to identify what has and has not become secure.
A central Phoenix principle is:
Teach the access skill without restricting access to the curriculum while it develops.
From understanding to support
Phoenix Atlas connections
Often useful
- systematic explicit reading instruction
- cumulative practice
- scaffolded decoding
- accessible curriculum materials
Worth considering
- structured literacy approaches
- specialist literacy intervention
- assistive technology
- assessment of speech/language or learning factors where relevant.
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Evidence and cautions
The evidence base for early reading strongly supports explicit teaching of the relationships between written letters and spoken sounds as a foundation for accurate word reading. England's Reading Framework reflects this evidence in recommending systematic synthetic phonics, including for older pupils who still need to secure decoding. (1)
Intervention research also shows that reading difficulties are not unitary: word-level instruction and comprehension intervention target related but distinguishable components of reading. (2)
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Public evidence sources
- The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy — government guidance.
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Possible explanatory lenses
Relevant possibilities include:
- phonological processing
- letter–sound knowledge
- blending
- working memory
- language development
- attention
- reading experience and instruction
- dyslexia
- interrupted learning
- multilingual literacy development.
About this entry’s source
Open Beta · read the evidence notes and limitations
Source status describes the underlying material. The current site edition is Open Beta; the evidence notes and limitations remain part of the entry.
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Explore connected approaches
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